Langevin's Train-the-Trainer Blog

About 7 years ago, I wrote a blog entitled, “The Game of Office Politics – Do you know how to play?" In it, I referenced a book by Dr. Lois Frankel called, “Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers.” In her book, Dr. Frankel suggests that women work too hard but don’t get promoted, purely because of that hard work. What else are we guilty of? We make our offices too girly and we don’t capitalize on work relationships. After all this time, I wondered, “Has anything changed?” Do women hold more leadership positions than before? Are we really breaking that glass ceiling and getting the corner office?

We sometimes run into people we look upon as “heroes.” Occasionally, they are real heroes. The fire fighter who runs into a burning building when everyone else is running out. Or the mother who lifts a car off her trapped child. Someone becomes your hero when their performance goes way beyond what you could normally expect of the typical person.

As a training professional, it’s very possible you’ll be approached by a manager or supervisor within your organization to discuss employee job performance. This discussion will likely happen when that manager is looking for ways in which to improve the job performance of a poorly performing direct report or team member. Don’t be surprised if that manager views training as the first and only option to fix the many possible issues related to unsatisfactory job performance.

A training needs analysis (TNA) is an often misunderstood and underused tool of a training department.

Of course, you don’t always have to conduct a TNA. If something is brand new, mission critical and non-intuitive, the need for training is obvious. Additionally, if training is mandated by law or executive direction, the decision making has been done.

To train or not to train…that’s the question. Every year, we spend billions of dollars on training in corporate North America, with no change in performance back on the job. So why are we training people? Sometimes management asks for it. Or maybe it’s the new flavor of the month and everyone is doing it. Or possibly we have to spend our budget dollars or we’ll lose them next year. Although we hate to admit it, I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of conducting training for some of these WRONG reasons.

Most of us would answer quite correctly, “Nothing.” This is especially true if the management you’re talking about is first-line supervisory management, the person your learners report to. You can be as persuasive as possible in the classroom, but if the words we have all heard (“Yeah, that’s what they said in training, but let me show you how we do it here.”) are spoken by the person who manages your learners, I know which way they’ll go.

A recent story in the USA Today newspaper was titled, “Always Working: Our All-Mobile World is Killing the Desktop – and Our Personal Lives.”

According to the USA Today survey, 7 in 10 US workers say technology has allowed work to move into their personal lives. Wow! That’s 70%! Is that a problem for you or does it just mean the new “working normal?”

One of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes is; “When you are finished learning, you are finished.” Learning, and therefore developing ourselves, should be an on-going process, and not just something we do when we go, or return, to school/college, or when we get a new job, for example.